Wednesday, 3 July 2013

The entries arrived to me in a box that had
been destroyed in transit. It was a
cardboard container about the size of a small TV set -- maybe two feet cubed,
and heavy. Someone must have dropped it
(more than once?) during its long journey between London and Washington, DC,
because holding it together now were layers of packing tape, new strapped over
old. You could see stacked papers
through a split running down the side; a corner had been torn apart. It was a massive, imposing thing, this demolished
box. My back strained as I heaved it toward
my office.

I don’t think I will ever forget opening it -- I remember feeling anxious (had all the stories arrived?) but also excited
(would they be good?) and, most of all, tingly with a sense of responsibility.(They had
all arrived, and more remarkable, nearly all of them turned out to be gripping
reads.)It was humbling that these 100-plus
stories had come to me at all.What an
honor, I thought, to have been vaulted into a group charged with doing the work
of cultural consecration, separating “good” literature from “bad” and,
inevitably, enforcing the standards that might determine what counts as good in
the first place. It is, to say the
least, a big job.In a chapter called “Prizes and the Politics of World Culture,” literary critic James English explains that conferring
global prizes like the Caine Prize always exposes a delicate problem. That’s because “to honor and recognize local
cultural achievement from a declaredly global vantage is inevitably to impose
external interference on local systems of cultural value. … There is no evading the social and
political freight of a global award at a time when global markets determine
more and more the fate of local [literary cultures]” (298). The asymmetries of cultural and economic
power that English references, familiar to anyone who follows debates about
what he calls “prize culture,” resonated in my unconscious, even as my
conscious mind paced through riveting stories of village life, urban violence,
river journeys to rebel camps. My double-consciousness
was yet more pronounced when I read in the Library of Congress’s European Reading
Room, which looks out on the U.S. Capitol, and whose ceiling lists the four
universal elements -- air, water, earth, and fire -- as though it had the power to
contain them all:

Ceiling of Library of Congress

The Caine Prize is awarded from a center of
global prestige, Oxford, but lends that prestige to writing from an area that,
as many of the submissions themselves attest, can seem far removed from airy cathedrals
of leisure like the Library of Congress or the Bodleian. Reading these stories produced, in me at
least, a sense of disconnection between where they took place and where I was
evaluating them.

Some of the stories were funny; many found
a place for redemption; others played irreverently with form; and not a few
dealt movingly with feelings of dislocation I felt I could recognize, having
come from no global metropolis but a California city best known for raisins. Some of the most polished stories conformed to
the mostly unwritten aesthetic rules of consecrating institutions like The New Yorker. Others, to my mind better, took less familiar
shapes, and elaborated vocabularies and images foreign to me: a plane crash
caused by magic; infidelities rupturing a patriarchal North African home; a
breathless ambulance chase through an urban zone; and episodic, first-person narratives
of sexual violation, unconsoled by formal resolution.

In his own blog post, John Sutherland
writes convincingly of the material circumstances that make art possible. My broken box of African writing made such
material circumstances uncannily palpable.
Some stories had been printed on office paper – 8 ½ x 11 and A4
variously— while others arrived in bound and printed formats of all sizes: in
literary journals from three continents, in Nigerian glossies, in a men’s
magazine published from London. Who had
sent them? From where? From what material situations, in other
words, had these documents been imagined, composed, and typed -- but also printed, stapled, mailed?

The most important “matter” of art is ineffable:
human experience, translated into form and made legible to another human being
across time and space. To access this kind
of matter you can download the stories now, from wherever you happen to be
sitting. But there is another kind of
matter, too, one I am glad to have accessed, if only for a time, in the piled-up
jumble of these astoundingly good submissions.
I am referring to the physical fact of the stories in their material
forms. These artworks were created in
any number of countries, in who knows what concrete circumstances; promoted by
editors equally various in situation; received in a small office in London by
staff members; reboxed there and shipped across the ocean to be handled by
innumerable postal workers, dropped, and re-taped along the way. Finally they arrived to me: a mass paper on which the experiences of
other human beings have been transformed, as if by magic, into aesthetic form
-- an amazing process of connection that is also, and in some final way,
physical.

Whoever wins this year’s Caine Prize will experience
both immaterial and material benefits: a feeling of profound accomplishment, perhaps,
but also £10,000 and (we hope) exposure to a wider audience. She or he will also visit Georgetown, as a
Writer-in-Residence at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. My colleagues and I look forward to welcoming
the author in Washington and to inhabiting briefly the same space with him or
her. And I hope the winner’s journey is
less bumpy than that of the document that won the ride.

Reference

English,
James F. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of
Cultural Value. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 2005.

Tuesday, 25 June 2013

As an African woman and artist living in London, I have always
loved reading stories about the continent, and what a privilege it has been to
read the stories submitted for the 2013 Caine Prize. I was taken to so many
places without getting on a plane.

I am used to admiring works of art,
especially sculptures, all over the world. The museums and shows I frequent are
designed to have character and to tell the viewer a story. As an observer, one
takes in a lot when you see beautiful or ugly objects, one is able to imagine
all sorts of scenarios as a result of what the artist and curators have
created. Taking the time to go to an
exhibition or event is not as instantaneous as opening a book. The process of
being a judge and keeping one’s opinions to one’s self has resulted in a very
private conversation with this year’s submissions.

It has been captivating to read and
concentrate on what characters are seeing and feeling.

Viewing works of art is often a public
experience; it is in front of you, one can walk around or walk away. As I read
the Caine Prize submissions in various locations - London, Venice,
Amsterdam - it was wonderful to carry a story around with me, which I could dive
into where ever I was. The descriptions of locations and textures were so
vivid; when I looked up I expected to feel heat and to swipe at mosquitoes.

It was a hedonistic process to feel so much
of what the characters felt; running on dusty roads and holding weapons bigger
than a child’s hand - all from within the peaceful, wintery landscapes of the
Western cities I visited.

My
lasting memory of this batch of stories is reading about the predicament of so
many girls and women on the continent. Is this the plight of my African
sisters? Or is it the story of all women in the world? Survival for girls in so
many of the stories was tough. In many ways it is a wonder that African women
rise to the to the top anywhere in the world.

I salute these
authors that have brought contemporary life and visions of the future into
text. Beyond all else, it is great to be publicising something other than the Eurocentric
view which is not everyone’s norm – not even in Europe.

She talks to Irenosen Okojie about being a
writer in diaspora, her writer’s process and the importance of the Caine Prize.

Irenosen Okojie (credit: Samantha Watson)

Your novel is a powerful depiction of the fractured
lives of children living in a shanty in Zimbabwe. How important was it to tell
their story?

The book was
written during Zimbabwe’s lost decade. If you follow Zimbabwean politics,
that’s when the country really came undone for the first time since Zimbabwean
independence.

For me that was really shocking because I had a beautiful
childhood, so to see what was happening was devastating. My family’s still back
home. We’ve heard those stories of there being no food in the stores, violence
because of government elections, activists disappearing, some of them turning
up dead. It just became important, especially to parallel the media narrative.
I was living in the west and seeing things through the internet. I felt someone
needed to tell an intimate story that showed what was happening on the ground
and captured the full essence of characters. Having kids really allowed me to
do that, they’re kids but disconnected from what’s going on. They still lived,
laughed and played despite what was happening. It became a big, necessary
project for me.

Ten year old Darling as a narrator rings authentic and
true. We’re reading about these children having to cope with horrible
circumstances yet because it’s told through a child’s eyes there’s
an other worldliness about it. How
hard was it to get her voice right?

It wasn’t hard, probably
because I emerged writing through craft and the child narrator. As a creator,
it’s something that I’d worked on since I started writing. When it came to
Darling, I was a bit more seasoned. You have to play on your strengths and
that’s what I did. I come from a culture where we just have character. Put a
bunch of kids together and they shine, they survive. I had to go back to my own
childhood and my childhood friends for that voice. It’s honest and that’s
important. You don’t want somebody to read it and think that doesn’t sound
right.

There’s bleakness in their circumstances but it’s also
very funny. How did you strike that balance and was it deliberate?

I come from a
place of laughter, absence of humour is not normal. Whatever we were doing, laughter
was a constant dynamic in our lives no matter the circumstances. I was talking
to my cousin about a recent funeral back home. And she said people were funny,
even at a funeral. It doesn’t have to be depressing. I needed to make that
conscious decision to remember to bring in humour. Although it was partly
deliberate and partly not, that’s how I am in my everyday life. I’m not a
serious person. My personality also comes through my writing, I have to be
pleased. Also, I was aware that I was working from a politically charged space,
very dense material. I needed to find a way to make it tolerable to read, that
was important. Not just with this book. For me it’s important that whoever
starts reading my work doesn’t put it down. Laughter carries you through and I
have to connect to the reader. Humour allows me to do that.

The second half of the novel is set in America where
Darling finds herself facing a different set of challenges. Did you draw on
your own experiences?

I think all
fiction is drawn from real experiences, people will tell you it’s fiction but
it’s real. It’s either your own reality or somebody else’s. My moving to
America is even more recent than my ten year old self. It had to be convincing, some of my
personality needed to appear on the page but also stealing from others, family,
friends, people I knew. It’s interesting, when my family members read the book;
I get phone calls saying so I saw such and such in the book! It’s one of those things;
if it comes into my writing I don’t resist it.

What do you think the reaction to the novel will be
like in Zimbabwe and what sort of dialogue do you hope it sparks?

In Zim, I have
no idea. I can’t really say one way or the other but I know Zimbabweans have
been reading my work. I blog, on Facebook they read bits of it. Mostly they’ve
been supportive and there’s nothing like being supported by your own people.
Especially now, sometimes you think they’re not reading but some of them are.
In terms of reaction, what matters is that they read. I’ve written and they’ll
read. Whether good or bad, as long as the work is read. My only prayer is that
the work is available for people. I just went home, first time in thirteen
years. I was surprised they were selling just stationery in what used to be the
biggest bookstore, no books. If they’re no novels available, people aren’t
accessing books and that’s dangerous. The genealogy of our literature has
always been engagement. It means there’s a disconnect somewhere. I’m hopeful,
people on the ground are asking me for the book and on Facebook. I’ll be
releasing it in Zim so there are ways they can access it. I hope we can work
something out to make the book affordable and available in libraries.

How has being a writer in diaspora shaped your writing
and how do you think it’s affected your sense of identity?

It’s quite
interesting that I had to leave home to discover myself as a writer. I come
from a culture where I never saw writers growing up. I read books and most of
the books were by western writers. But beyond that, writing was never a career
option to me. You had to be a nurse, doctor, a lawyer, which I went to the US
to study or an engineer. I know that being in the diaspora for me meant I was given
the golden opportunity to come into myself, to study creative writing which I
wouldn’t have done in Zimbabwe. I would have studied a Masters in Finance. With
the cost of leaving home came the benefit of discovery. For me it was when I
embraced my Zimbabweaness more. At home, it wasn’t necessary; you’re surrounded
by Zimbabweans so it was never an issue. Your race is never an issue because
you’re living in a space where everyone looks like you. Then going out, you
realise, I’m not from here. I’m this other thing. This other thing is not
always at home in a space that can be both welcoming and marginalising. Which
is why I’m obsessed with my homeland in my writing. It’s certainly made me fall
in love with my roots even more. I can’t find that grounding sense of identity
where I am which is why when it comes to identifying myself as a Zimbabwean
writer, I feel I am. I don’t just want to be called a writer. For me that
identity is important, it meant survival and grounding. We’re living in a time
where technology’s so prevalent. This book wouldn’t have been written without
that. I was getting on Facebook, seeing people and teachers updating about what
was happening back home and that fed into the whole process.

You won the Caine Prize for Hitting Budapest. How did
that help as a launch pad for your career?

When the Caine
Prize is mentioned, I remember I’ve spent all the money. On a serious note, it
gave me confidence especially because it happened at a time when I was just
starting out. In as much as I love writing and know it’s what I’m supposed to
be doing but when you’re young you really think about things. You know you’re
expected to be doing something that’s more secure. You live in a practical
world of bills, of supporting family especially those of us in the diaspora. You
have to be sensible but it showed me that I could make it.

How important do you think the Caine Prize is for
profiling African writers?

It’s the biggest
prize in Africa, it’s very necessary. There aren’t so many things happening on
the continent itself. It’s a western prize in a sense but that doesn’t
undermine it. It’s still important, whether you’re looking at people who’ve
been short listed or won, they’ve gone on to do amazing things. I’d like
it to be more engaged on the continent. I know there was a workshop run which
is cool. It gives people the opportunity to workshop when we don’t have a
strong workshop culture. But I’d like to see a Caine Prize winner do a
residency in Africa. Send that person to a school to work with kids. Young
people are very impressionable and I think that would make a difference.

From Hitting Budapest, the story then evolved into a
novel. Tell us about the trajectory.

It’s the first
chapter in the novel so people think that it actually came first. The thing is, it
actually came while I was working on the novel. It was in a different form
then. When I got to Hitting Budapest, the story found its pulse. Then I had to
rework the book and I reworked it a million times. Moving it forward and
shaping it around these kids.

What’s your writer’s process?

I don’t have a
fancy, high sounding process myself. I
try and envision a story in my head. Write as much as I can inside my head.
Maybe that’s because I was brought up on hearing stories. I think of a story
first versus it written down. Then I’ll write it in my notebook, edit as much
as I can to get the language right. Then I bring it to the gadgets. I’m laid
back and I don’t write every day. Writing isn’t always writing in terms of
doing the physical act, I’m processing things in my head all the time. I’m an
observer of life. I think about things and my characters. So I’m always in one
way or another, involved in the process. I try not to stress, I’m not a serious
person. I don’t take things seriously. There are times when I look at my work
and think, that’s interesting or that could have been better! I think it’s
necessary to be objective but the main thing is to enjoy what I’m doing. I
enjoy it more if I don’t over think it. I just work from instincts. It’s
interesting to hear intelligent people or critics discuss things I may not
necessarily have worried about. You know things that just happened.

What sort of stories are you interested in telling?

I’m interested
in stories that say something about who we are and engage with social issues.
My art has to have meaning; it has to have people talking about things that
matter. Like We Need New Names, there’s so much about that that I wanted to
say. That’s what drives me for now, you never know what will come in future but
to have a dialogue going and people talking about things.

Who are some of your literary influences?

The storytellers
in my life, our literature is oral. There was a time when I read nothing but
literature in my native language which was still for me a form of engagement. I
learned so much about storytelling from those and about language itself. Then
there were people like Yvonne Vera, Toni Morrison, Edward P Jones, the usual
suspects. Young writers now are just creating brilliant work. Writers like
Justin Torres and then you have people online who may not necessarily be
published. I’m creating at a very vibrant time. It’s a good time to be a writer
and of course I’m connected to young writers, Africans and otherwise. We’re
having interesting conversations.

Which book do you wish you’d written and why?

I wish I’d
written the bible! Seriously, everybody reads the bible. I approach the bible
as a storybook. I don’t come from a seriously Christian background. As kids you
didn’t have the whole picture and we were told these bible stories and they
were just stories to us. I would have made it NoViolet’s bible. I may write a
novel in that kind of style. Look me up in five or six years and see!

What are you working on next?

I’m working on
recovering from writing and promoting We Need New Names. I’m working on a
collection of stories. I’m not trying to force it, sometimes there’s this
pressure to go straight onto the next book. In as much as I want something to
come along, it will come along when it does.

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Why
is the standard pop music track around three minutes? Because, on the old
wind-up gramophone that was as long as the steel spring could keep the disc
revolving at 78rpm.

Why
do films have musical ‘soundtracks’ and theatrical plays don’t? Because silent
films (i.e. those before 1925) had either little orchestras, or pianists. It’s
another ‘cultural inertia’ which just, somehow, hung about long after its time
had gone.

Why
do people dress up, and behave more ‘correctly’ at the theatre than the cinema?
Because, for 200 years, theatres operated under ‘royal’ licence.

Which
leads to the question I’d pose here. Why are African writers so damned good at
short stories? Short, where narrative is concerned, is not easy: it requires
more art.

Having
just read 100 entries (the bulk of them short stories) for this year’s Caine
Prize I’ve been struck by this almost universal mastery (is there a word
‘mistressy’---there should be) of the short form.

Two
things particularly constitute that mastery. One is the ability to grab the
reader from the first sentence. I’ll give one example, from Elnathan John’sBayan Layi:

The boys who sleep under the Kuka tree in Bayan Layi like
to boast about the people they have killed.

Twenty-five
words, and the hook is in the jaw. I would defy anyone not to read on.

There’s
no room here to go into the intricate techniques of short narrative. But the
other thing which strikes me (and, to put my cards on the table, I come from a
different literary tradition) is the control of ‘voice’. One hears, rather than
reads. It’s a powerful---at times overwhelming---effect. The ears ring.

Returning
to my little riff on ‘material circumstances create art’ there seem to me to be
two factors at work here. African writing (it’s a strength) still has roots
firmly in oral traditions. If you tell a story orally, you can’t go on too
long---it’s cut to the chase from those first 25 words. The other factor is
that Africa, until recently, has never had the publishing infrastructure that
Europe has built up over 500 years. No HarperCollins, no Viking-Penguin . There
is, I think, something uneasy-making that every major work of Chinua Achebe was
given the world by courtesy of a British or American publishing house.
Colonialism of the imprint. Short stories can slip past that barrier.

Having
thought about this year’s Caine entries (would, incidentally, there were ten
‘first prizes’) two things give me pause for thought. Large African states do
now have their own publishing industries. And a surprising number of entries
for this year’s Caine are from graduates (in some cases instructors) in the
thriving ‘creative writing’ classes in the US / UK.

These
two factors will, I think, bring new creative pressures onto African fiction. How that works out is for the judges in the
2023 Caine Prize to report on.

Friday, 12 April 2013

Today I finished reading
all the stories submitted for this year’s Caine Prize. In February the postman
had delivered a sumptuous box full of books, journals, magazines and
photocopied sheets. I opened it straight
away. Inside was the future winner of the 2013 Caine Prize and I was going to play a part in
discovering him or her. What struck me
first was the practicality of running a prize.
Each book, for example, had a typed label on the front cover with the
name of the submitted story and the page numbers. A spread-sheet, three pages long,
listed each entry by title, author, country of origin, publication and whether
the story was included in a book, journal or as a photocopy (most of the
photocopies were internet publications). Each of the five judges must have
received an identical box. A lot of hard
work had gone into this, I thought. Running a prize was not an easy matter.

And would judging it be any easier? At
first I dug in and read haphazardly but I had to develop some system. I decided
to grade the stories. I gave a D to
those stories that should not have been published in the first place, let alone
submitted. I gave a C to the mediocre ones. And I gave an A to the exceptional,
outstanding ones, the kind of stories I would want to pass on to friends, the kind
of stories I would be keen to recommend. As for the Bs, they intrigued me the
most because here was talent that needed development, here were shy voices that
needed to be raised a notch, here were first drafts that needed more work and
here were flashes of brilliance bogged down by clumsy skills and what I suspected
to be lack of sufficient exposure to critical reading and editorial support.
Perhaps the As would forge ahead no matter what but the Bs were the ones in
need of encouragement

In conclusion, the statistics were
as follows:

A s 19 stories 18.4%

B s 26 stories 25.2%

C s 36 stories 35%

D s 22 stories 21.4%

I made notes on the As and Bs and I
am now looking forward to reading them again. But before I started on this next
stage, I decided to jot down the top ten stories that made the biggest initial
impression on first reading, the ones that stood out in my memory. It turned out that six of them were ones I
had given an A grade and four a B. Perhaps they would be the stories I would
take with me to the judges’ short-list meeting, perhaps on a second reading I
would swap them for others. Have I steered
away from the more brutal themes? Am I more inclined towards the domestic and
emotional? I am looking forward to
discussing my choices with the other judges. I am sure my own tastes would be challenged at
times but hopefully, too, my instincts would be confirmed.

Nearly every submitted story
reflected the economic, political and social difficulties of life in
Africa. The writers did not shy away
from sensitive issues or gruelling realities.
But serious subject mattersdo
not guarantee a good story.There are other qualities that are more
important – creative imagination, skills, the ability to invoke delight, plough depth, stir drama and chart connections,
a sense of place, history and culture,
characters who intrigue, an individual vision. Here are some of the notes
I jotted down on the entries I judged worth re-reading, the ones that scored As
and Bs

Earthy, confident writing with a
sense of integrity

Poetic and strange

Chilling with a neat ending

No-nonsense rending of a familiar
tale of tragedy

Spirited, universal

Creepy

Vibrant, great opening line

Confident, superb pacing

Wacky, gripping,

Fluid narrative, touching

Bold…. I want to read more from this
writer.

Throughout the past two months I have
read approximately one hundred stories and kept company with the diverse voices
of African writers. A literary prize such as the Caine confers recognition,
exposure and an international stamp of approval. African writers deserve their place in the
sun. Whatever their themes, regardless
of their chosen setting, at the end of the
day it is excellent writing that makes the powerful impact, it is the cream
which rises to the top.

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

When earlier this
year Ansar Dine fled Timbuktu
pursued by the French contingent of the African-led International Support
Mission, it seemed like UN Security Council Resolution 2085 had been fulfilled.

The bad guys were in the
retreat, aid and support was forthcoming, and the ancient libraries of Timbuktu and the adobe
shrines had been saved with barely a shot fired.

But then came the reports of a
traumatised populous, of seemingly ransacked libraries and the abandoned
carcasses of empty archive boxes. The unthinkable nightmare had occurred -
retreating Ansar Dine had meted out an ideological scorched earth strategy,
destroying or stealing some of the most valuable contents of the great
libraries of Timbuktu.

They knew the significance of
stories, of how libraries can be repositories of identity. If we needed
reminding, it showed us again what we had learned from previous conflicts
across the continent; the importance of narrative, of stories that can be used
like weapons to bind peoples together more powerfully than any contract, as
ideological rallying points and totems. It is as true today as when Timbuktu was home to one
of the great medieval universities of the world.

In the wake of the liberation of
Timbuktu, there
are renewed hopes that the stories of archives emptied in the fog of war might
not have been wholly accurate. They have been counteracted by new stories of salvaged
manuscripts being secreted south, or even carried north to be buried in the
desert. The only thing that is clear is the importance of words, the power of
ancient stories, the potency of new narratives and the way in which they are
charged.

Gus visited Timbuktu when he presented the "Lost Kingdoms of Africa" series for BBC 4.

For Africans, fighting for the
right to tell their stories is something that has been hard won – whether in
the form of the establishment of ancient libraries, or the challenging of
colonial regimes or repressive governments, words have been our allies.

It is one of the reasons why I
have been a long-term Caine Prize groupie.

Over the last decade, I have
read the short-listed stories, speculated on who the winners might be and,
after the announcement, I have followed the subsequent writing of contributors
over the years.

The true impact of this prize
is difficult to calculate.

Over its lifetime there have
been seismic shifts in publishing economics, distribution mechanics and
international book-culture – and African and diasporic authors have been
profoundly impacted - but the Caine Prize has stood as one of the few positive
constants.

Looking back, the direct
benefit to many of the shortlisted authors and eventual winners is clear to see,
but I would imagine that Sir Michael Caine (after whom the prize was
posthumously named) would have been equally proud of the more ineffable
by-product, of simply reminding us of the important and particular contribution
of African and diasporic writing to contemporary literature.

As I have begun to read this
year’s submissions, I am once again made vividly aware of that particular voice.
This is not just cutting edge writing of real quality, but at its best it
offers a unique window onto Africa as it confronts
the stresses and profound changes that the 21st century has bestowed upon the
Continent. Caine writing does not describe the Africa of 24 Hour News, but it
somehow captures that little heard voice of the loving, laughing, crying,
complex Africa that I recognize and love.